by Ace Atkins
Sam sat down across from her.
“How’d you like to come with me?”
“I don’t think you’re any better than those two.”
“I’d disagree.”
“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
“I’m a Pinkerton. I work for the attorneys representing Mr. Arbuckle. You’d like to help out Mr. Arbuckle, wouldn’t you?”
She shrugged and laughed, the cops and LaPeer starting to yell and point now but being drowned out by the trumpet player barking out the lyrics to “Bow Wow Blues” and the smart set at the tables and on the dance floor screaming.
Sam turned back to the bar and noticed it was all men now, all dressed in that identical black, the blond woman with the nice shape and the fox gone.
“I don’t know a thing,” Zey said.
Sam spotted the woman by a door near the stage, pushing away that piece of hair from her eye and readjusting the fox as if it carried a great weight. She had the most wonderful shoulders.
“Alice said you heard Virginia say she’d been hurt?”
“How many times have I got to be asked this? I wish I’d never even gone to that stupid party, but Alice dragged me there because she wanted to meet Lowell Sherman ever since she saw him in that picture where he played a king. You know he’s not even English?”
From across the bar, the tall girl with the legs and the snow blond hair scanned the room and nodded. Sam looked over the dance floor that resembled a chessboard and saw a man in a long raincoat and flop hat nod back to the woman and then nod again to another fella dressed just like him by another door. Sam put his hand across the table and held Zey’s long fingers.
“What’s the idea?”
“We need to go.”
“Why?”
“Now.”
Just then, the fox coat dropped to the floor at the feet of the long-legged woman and a 12-gauge shotgun appeared in her delicate hands, which slammed out two cartridges into the plaster ceiling, killing the music and cuing the screams.
The girl brushed back the hair from her face again. The face was lovely, heart-shaped, with full red lips and silver eyes that jumped out at you from all that white skin and hair.
Sam found himself smiling with admiration at the girl with the gun.
“Nobody better shimmy a goddamn inch,” yelled the girl. “I’m a federal agent and this is a raid.”
“Did SHE REALLY shoot into the ceiling?” Frank Dominguez asked.
“She did,” Sam said.
“And was she a real beaut?”
“She had a hell of a shape. I don’t know if I’d call her a beauty. When the houselights turned on, you could see maybe her nose had been busted at one time. But she had a quality about her. Sleepy bedroom eyes. You know the type.”
“And they just let you go?”
Sam nodded and stifled a cough with a handkerchief and his fist.
“And the girl?”
“She went with Reagan and Kennedy.”
“You know ’em?”
“I know Reagan. I know Kennedy by reputation.”
“And you don’t like him?”
“I heard stories.”
The two men sat in the center of the Palace Hotel’s Garden Court. It was early and a negro woman worked an electric vacuum machine on the carpet. The first light showed through the glass-paneled ceiling that domed the Garden Court, filled with potted palms and fresh-cut flowers, chandeliers that winked with prisms of color. A bird was caught in the ceiling and flew from side to side, slamming and fluttering against the glass.
“You’re not going to eat?”
“I’m fine.”
“It’s on me,” Dominguez said.
“Nice place.”
“The man who built it killed himself. Jumped into the bay right before his bank went bust.”
Sam ordered ham and eggs with hash, but the waiter said they didn’t serve hash at the Palace and so Sam ordered toast. It wasn’t quite six a.m.
“Coffee?” the waiter asked.
“Sure.”
Sam lit a cigarette and settled in. “I talked to the Blake girl. She said she didn’t hear anything but Virginia Rappe saying she was going to die. Before she got pinched, Zey Prevon told me she’d heard Virginia saying the same thing.”
“And we have Maude Delmont saying Virginia accused Mr. Arbuckle before she died.”
“Can you use that?”
“Conversations with someone killed in a crime are completely admissible.”
“Did the cops turn over the autopsy records to you?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m just wondering how she died. I know the papers say she was crushed. But how? Were her bones broken?”
“Ruptured bladder.”
Sam nodded.
“During the rape?”
“There was no rape.”
Sam nodded.
“It’s a medical impossibility.”
“She was hurt in another way?”
“This is a very delicate matter, Mr. Hammett.”
“Yes, sir,” Sam said. “But I do work for you.”
Dominguez nodded and crossed his legs, showing off a pair of bedroom slippers that didn’t quite match his pin-striped suit. He tried lighting a cigarette with a lighter out of juice. Sam passed him a pack of matches.
“This goes no further.”
“Of course.”
Dominguez let out smoke from the side of his mouth and shrugged, leaning into the table. “Mr. Arbuckle’s pencil isn’t as sharp as it used to be.”
Sam sat still.
“In fact, it hasn’t written for some time.”
“I’d like to see the coroner’s report.”
“I’d like that, too,” Dominguez said. “This whole thing stinks. I just learned last night that the autopsy was conducted immediately after the girl died on Friday at the hospital.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“The county coroner wasn’t present and wasn’t notified. Somebody called the coroner’s office Saturday about the dead girl and rang off. After that the coroner called the police and it was the police who talked to Maude Delmont. The autopsy was completely illegal.”
“YOU GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH,” Maude Delmont said. “Where’d you go?”
“If I got pinched, all our work woulda been out the window.”
On the staticky telephone line down to Los Angeles, Al Semnacher’s voice sounded as squeaky and annoying as ever.
“Do you know the flaming pile of shit you left me with?” Maude said.
“How was I supposed to know he was gonna kill her? That wasn’t exactly the plan.”
“But you sure as hell waltzed off with her slip and bloomers. What were you going to do with those, Al?”
“That’s why I’m calling.”
“Well, fuck you. You can take your apology and shove it up your ass.”
“They have them.”
“Who?”
“The cops. They came down to L.A. yesterday and they knew all about the slip and the bloomers and they took them from me.”
“How’d they know?”
“Those two girls Lowell Sherman brought. They told the cops they’d seen me take the torn clothes.”
“Are you in jail?”
“No.”
“Are you trying to frame me? Because if you are, I’ll tell them about every goddamn con we worked together. I’ll sing Hallelujah, you fucking rat bastard, as the stern slips beneath the waves.”
“Poetic.”
“They know.”
“I told the cops I’d taken Virginia’s clothes because they looked like nice rags to wash my machine.”
“And they bought that crock?”
“Come again? Bad connection.”
“They bought it?”
“I think so,” Al said. “But I have to come to Frisco and testify to the grand jury.”
“Me, too.”
“We should talk. You know, before.”
“What the hell are we doing now?”
“I’ll call when my train arrives.”
“Al?”
“Yeah?”
“If you fuck me, I won’t think twice about bringing us both down.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie. If I fuck you, I’ll kiss you first.”
“You call me sweetie again and I’ll bust your head wide-open.”
Maude rang off and put the earpiece back on the hook. She walked to the basin and placed a washcloth in some cool water, running the cloth over the back of her neck and her brow and looking at herself in a little mirror. She smiled, admiring her full fanny. She snatched a wide-brimmed black hat off the bed and adjusted it on her head to convey the proper tilt for mourning and took the washcloth to wipe off the paint from her eyes and mouth and bare breasts. A black dress that ran straight to her ankles hung on a hook on the door.
She practiced a few mournful looks until she heard a knock at the door. Staring out the peephole, she saw that gigantic policewoman, Katherine Eisenhart, standing in the hall with a bouquet of flowers.
“Thought you could use a pick-me-up.”
Maude nodded and opened the door, taking the dress from the hook, only wearing her bloomers and stockings. “You’re too kind,” she said so softly.
“Have you even eaten?”
“I’ve tried, but no.”
Katherine walked to the windows, cracking open the frame to let in some cool air. “We have an hour till you’re to appear. My God, it’s so warm in here.”
“I’m so nervous.”
“Don’t be nervous.”
“I’ve never spoken before such a group.”
“Just tell the truth, Mrs. Delmont.”
Maude watched big Kate fanning her face with her hand, a healthy flush in the big woman’s cheeks. Maude cocked her head and loosely fingered herself across her chest and belly, taking off the hat and pulling the sweaty black hair off the nape of her neck. She used her hands to brace herself against the window frame, letting the cool air come off the bay, nipples growing erect.
“You are such a great friend, Miss Eisenhart.”
“You can call me Kate, ma’am. Most everyone does.”
“Just how does someone so sweet become a policewoman?”
“Mrs. Delmont, the assistant manager, Mr. Boyle, has been asking me questions about your bill here. He said that you’ve said the San Francisco Police Department has put you up. I told him that he was surely mistaken, but he said that you had hung up in his face. I know he must be exaggerating his point, but I must let you know.”
Kate let her question hang there, making the rest of it seem indelicate. Maude loved women who still thought about indelicate subjects.
Maude sat on the bed, crossed her stockinged legs, leaned back on her elbows, and stared down at her perked nipples as if just noticing them and laughing as if a secret shared between two sisters. Kate looked as if she’d swallowed an entire egg.
“IF My PARTNER KNEW I was meeting you here, he’d eat my liver out with a side of onions,” Tom Reagan said.
“I wouldn’t eat your liver, Tom. I guess it’s pretty used up.”
“Funny, Sam,” Reagan said. “What do you want?”
“I came to watch the sea lions wrestle. You know, they look just like dogs to me. Look at that tough old bastard up on that rock. He looks like someone has taken a few good ole chomps out of his hide.”
“I can’t talk about Arbuckle.”
“And I don’t want you to talk about Arbuckle.”
Sam leaned into the railing of Pier 56, mashing the last of his cigarette against the wood and losing it in the waves beating the crusty pilings. He lit another and stared thoughtfully at the pilings, waiting a few beats before he was going to get to the point, but instead of great timing he found himself in the middle of a coughing fit that nearly brought him to his knees. He covered his mouth, splattering the cotton with phlegm and blood, and hearing bigheaded Tom Reagan say, “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.”
“No need to say his name twice,” Sam said, recovering. “God hears you the first time.”
“You never told me you were a lunger.”
“You never asked.”
“Worse in the cold.”
“Doesn’t help.”
Tom was dressed in his city detective tweeds and no cap. His boots were shined and his milky Irish skin was so clean-shaven the blood vessels across his cheeks and nose glowed blue.
“Why would someone conduct an autopsy without permission?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
“You got to bring the man’s family into it? I’m just being hypothetical, Tom.”
“No, you’re calling in your marker for saving my ass in the train yards.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“Why?”
Tom peered down at the waves beating the pilings and out at two sea lions barking at each other and play-biting mouths before one did a somersault back into the bay.
He shrugged. “We don’t know.”
“But you wouldn’t have known about the girl dying or thought of it as a murder without that anonymous tip. Could it have been Delmont?”
“The call came from the hospital. It was a nurse.”
“Can I get a copy of the report?”
“It will all be handed over after the grand jury sees it today.”
“Did you at least ask for a second opinion? Did the coroner look at the body?”
“He did.”
“Tom?”
Tom looked skyward and readjusted his coat, making himself stand taller, as if standing at attention. He leaned into Sam’s ear. “It’s tough to make a good inspection when some of the parts are missing from the machine.”
He walked back on the dock toward the Embarcadero.
“Tom?”
The police detective waved back over his shoulder but never turned around.
7
Sam handed the man his card. “I’ve already spoken to the police, Mr. Hammett.” “You been the hotel dick here long?”
“About a year.”
“Rotten work.”
“You ain’t kidding.”
“You got to play babysitter to the lot of ’em.”
“Sounds like you know.”
“Lots of my jobs have been about the same,” Sam said. “My boss, Phil Geauque, said you were a good egg. Said we always trade out for some fair business.”
The hotel dick, Glennon, pocketed the Pinkerton card in the lobby of the St. Francis and screwed up his face.
“I don’t want to make trouble for you,” Sam said.
“Don’t look too quick over my shoulder, but you see that fat-cheeked fella in the glasses?”
“The one with the scowl?”
“You got it,” Glennon said. “That’s Mr. Boyle. You see, earlier today Mr. Boyle brought in the staff and said he’d fire us if we were even to say the word Arbuckle and to forget that Labor Day even came already.”
“Mr. Boyle doesn’t look like much fun.”
“How’s Mr. Geauque?”
“Soft as a bed of nails.”
Glennon leaned up on the toes of his dress shoes and sucked on a tooth. Loud enough for the lobby to hear, he said, “Mister, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” and in a lower voice, “John’s Grill, thirty minutes.”
The restaurant was a couple doors down from the back of the Flood Building on Ellis Street. They served a solid sandwich, and a mean plate of chops with a baked potato and sliced tomatoes when a man could afford it, and if you were lucky enough to catch a good waiter they’d dish out something a bit warmer in your coffee cup. The floor was honeycombed black and white tile and set with small tables and café chairs. Ceiling fans scattered the cigarette smoke.
The dinner rush hadn’t started yet, and Sam found a place by the open windows. He said hello to the owner, a tough old Greek he knew, and they talked about ball teams and fi
ghters and some of the tong action that had been popping up in Chinatown. They lamented Prohibition and President Harding, and discussed Sam’s becoming a father.